TY - JOUR
T1 - Development, environmental degradation, and disease spread in the Brazilian Amazon
AU - Castro, Marcia C.
AU - Baeza, Andres
AU - Codeço, Cláudia Torres
AU - Cucunubá, Zulma M.
AU - Dal'Asta, Ana Paula
AU - De Leo, Giulio A.
AU - Dobson, Andrew P.
AU - Carrasco-Escobar, Gabriel
AU - Lana, Raquel Martins
AU - Lowe, Rachel
AU - Monteiro, Antonio Miguel Vieira
AU - Pascual, Mercedes
AU - Santos-Vega, Mauricio
N1 - Funding Information:
The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) under funding from the National Science Foundation (DBI-1639145) supported this work. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Castro et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - The Amazon is Brazil's greatest natural resource and invaluable to the rest of the world as a buffer against climate change. The recent election of Brazil's president brought disputes over development plans for the region back into the spotlight. Historically, the development model for the Amazon has focused on exploitation of natural resources, resulting in environmental degradation, particularly deforestation. Although considerable attention has focused on the long-term global cost of "losing the Amazon," too little attention has focused on the emergence and reemergence of vector-borne diseases that directly impact the local population, with spillover effects to other neighboring areas. We discuss the impact of Amazon development models on human health, with a focus on vector-borne disease risk. We outline policy actions that could mitigate these negative impacts while creating opportunities for environmentally sensitive economic activities.
AB - The Amazon is Brazil's greatest natural resource and invaluable to the rest of the world as a buffer against climate change. The recent election of Brazil's president brought disputes over development plans for the region back into the spotlight. Historically, the development model for the Amazon has focused on exploitation of natural resources, resulting in environmental degradation, particularly deforestation. Although considerable attention has focused on the long-term global cost of "losing the Amazon," too little attention has focused on the emergence and reemergence of vector-borne diseases that directly impact the local population, with spillover effects to other neighboring areas. We discuss the impact of Amazon development models on human health, with a focus on vector-borne disease risk. We outline policy actions that could mitigate these negative impacts while creating opportunities for environmentally sensitive economic activities.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000526
DO - 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000526
M3 - Article
C2 - 31730640
AN - SCOPUS:85075813601
SN - 1544-9173
VL - 17
JO - PLoS biology
JF - PLoS biology
IS - 11
M1 - e3000526
ER -